ROCKET SCIENCE

Here, as promised is the Nuclear Fusion Rant from our pal Aeswiren...

"Thing to remember is that Fusion research was (deliberately) starved of money for the past 25 years. To the point where Europe is the leader in the field. The fingerprints of Exxon Mobil are said to be all over this, but it's not an easy story to track down. No surprise there. But if the US threw $500 Billion at the problem, the first commercialTritium-Deuterium Fusion Reactors would be online in maybe 15 years. From that to Deuterium-Deuterium would be the next technological jump, and from that toWater-Deuterium in maybe another 25 years.

Fusion is something to explore, no matter what, because that technology, ultimately, is our space drive, it's what will lift us from Stage 1 to Stage 2, get us off-planet, grow up somewhat and ensure that we have a future that wouldn't be cut short by an inconvenient 10 mile wide spacerock. Even if we detected something coming in from way out, like in the orbit of Neptune, and we had maybe two or three years, we could do nothing to save ourselves. Nothing. And a major impact would wipe out civilization and take us back to 100,000 years ago, just like that. Start over, but this time without any easily accessed deposits of copper, coal, iron, oil, you name it. Some folks might say, "okay-- fine, we'd just be bands of hunters and gatherers, fitting into Gaia's envelope along with the wildebeest and the lion." But I think it'd be a fucking, criminal waste of the opportunity to take the big next step and become a Stage 2 Civilization, spanning our solar system, etc. And later, we can rehab the Earth and turn most of it into a nature park, and visit it and go "wow, mom, the gravity's like, heavy."

And if you’re now muttering about Aeswiren’s taste for interplanetary travel, or dismissing his ideas as advanced Star Trek, let’s just remember that without humanity's inate and insatiable curiosity we’d still be on all fours, in the long grass of some stinking veldt, wondering if it was safe to stand up.

The secret word is Imperative